Tory Councillor claims domestic violence policy a “war on men”
Cath Elliott
Posted on December 22, 2010
Thanks to Women’s Grid for this story on Portsmouth Tory Councillor James Williams:
A Tory councillor has vowed not to campaign for his party until it reverses a policy designed to combat domestic violence.
Portsmouth City Councillor James Williams announced he will not work for the Tories outside his own Nelson ward unless it withdraws the new ‘Go’ orders.
The orders give senior police officers on-the-spot rights to remove men suspected of committing acts of domestic abuse from their homes for 48 hours. Courts can then extend that to two weeks.
The policy was designed by the last Labour government, but is now being piloted in three areas of the UK by Home Secretary Theresa May. There is no equivalent policy aimed at women. Cllr Williams says the orders challenge freedom and are part of a feminist war on men.
‘As an elected Conservative councillor, I am ashamed Theresa May has chosen to adopt totalitarian methods in the ongoing war against men by the feminist movement,’ he said.
‘I shall not take part in any election campaign for the Conservatives outside my own ward until this vile sexist legislation is removed.’
He added: ‘This is a Stalinist policy and goes against everything I believe in as a Conservative.
‘I am in the party because I believe in freedom and fairness, and this policy is the opposite.
‘Domestic violence, both physical and emotional, is a very serious problem, but this policy gives police the power to act as judge and jury, kicking men out of their homes.
‘What if a woman alleges domestic abuse even if none has happened? It’s unfair that this policy will deprive men from seeing their children even if they’ve done nothing wrong.’
Nicki Youern, chief exec of YOU, which runs Portsmouth’s women’s refuge, said: ‘It’s a little early to make definite judgments on this policy.
‘We don’t know what effect it will have and it is only being piloted at the moment. But it may help to protect vulnerable women and children from violence.’
Councillor Donna Jones, chairwoman of Portsmouth North Conservative party, said: ‘He has told us his position and we have accepted it.’
http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/newshome/Domestic-violence-policy-is-a.6664587.jp
Now it will come as no surprise to regular readers of this blog that Williams’ statement: “As an elected Conservative councillor, I am ashamed Theresa May has chosen to adopt totalitarian methods in the ongoing war against men by the feminist movement” kind of piqued my interest a bit.
And it will also come as no surprise that I then decided to do a bit of digging on Councillor James Williams.
Here’s what I found.
Williams states on his declaration of interest form for Portsmouth City Council that he has some level of involvement in:
He is the chair of the council’s Education, children and young people scrutiny panel.
He’s got a bug up his arse about domestic violence, and earlier this year submitted a freedom of information request to his own council asking how much money it has received for funding domestic violence initiatives, and asking for details on which organisations have received that money.
He presents a radio show on Express FM called Mens Matters [sic]. It’s a radio show that misogynists on sites such as The Rights of Man (no, I’m not linking) cannot praise enough.
Click here for December’s edition of Mens Matters, where Councillor James Williams, chair of Portsmouth City Council’s Education, children and young people scrutiny panel advertises on air the False Allegation Support Organisation, and where he waxes lyrical about domestic violence.
And click on the following link for his recent ‘ground-breaking’ ‘historic’ ‘anti-feminist’ broadcast, that was apparently based on documentaries produced by the misogynist Man, Woman and Myth (subtitle: Truth, Lies, and the War on Men) website (again, I’m not linking).
HistoricAntiFeminismBroadcastInTheUk
So, to sum up, Portsmouth Tory Councillor James Williams, the chair of Portsmouth City Council’s Education, children and young people scrutiny panel, who has vowed not to campaign for his party until it reverses a policy designed to combat domestic violence, is a poster boy for the UK men’s rights movement and a shill for misogynists up and down the land.
What a great guy.
And before anyone says “Oh, but maybe James Williams the MRA is a different James Williams from James Williams the Portsmouth councillor” – I rang Councillor Williams and he confirmed that yes, he is the James Williams who presents the radio show Mens Matters on Express FM.
Too Much To Say For Myself 
Domestic Violence Protection Orders will be able to be used against both male and female abusers. In claiming that they are a ‘war on men’ he is tacitly acknowledging that most abusers are male.
We’re at war against men? I didn’t get that memo. Where do I go to receive my allocated assault rifle and chocolate ration?
You gotta love the way these guys’ faux-concern always, always, ALWAYS comes down to one thing: women are lying bitches who want to ruin the lives of innocent men by accusing them of things they did not do.
It’s so revealingly weak that this is the ONLY borderline reasonable flaw that MRAs can find in either rape or domestic violence initiatives; because there is no other wya for them to justify their pearl clutching other than come out and say outloud that women are subhuman, disgusting creatures who deserve to be beaten and raped, the dirty lying sluts.
Sorry for the awful swearing, but just, ugh. I feel like I need a shower after reading about this guy. No, wait, this DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED REPRESENTATIVE guy. Ugh.
BrockleyKate
LOL!!! War against men my arse. Some dudes are completely delusional. The question is, why isn’t this guy in prison for publicly denouncing policies designed to combat violence against women? Is he against basic human rights?
I agree this is a great idea for getting abusive partners out of the home and give them time to cool down.
But he does have a point (even if he put it across in a way that makes him sound like an arse) – why *does* it only apply to men? Are the austerity measures in this country so bad we have to save money by keeping new laws as basic as possible? 😉
Seriously though – regardless of whether the majority are men, a majority is not all – it seems ridiculous that this couldn’t have been passed to cover both sexes.
Joe, it doesn’t only apply to men. that’s the huge massive flaw with this newspaper article and the cllr’s view:
s.24 of the Crime and Security Act 2010, which is the statute behind the orders, provides that they may be issued to “persons” – the use of the gender-neutral means that they can be issued against persons of any gender..
and, of course, men are overwhelmingly the perpetrators of domestic violence. it isn’t 1.5 men who are being murdered every week by their partners or ex partners, 1 in 4 men aren’t going to be victims of DV. 100 million men aren’t missing. 100,000 men aren’t raped every year. As one feminist said, there is a genocide against my people. if the war is against anyone, it’s women.
Thanks sianushka, you got there before me.
Joe, here’s a link to the relevant statute. As Sian says, it’s actually gender neutral, so Councillor Williams is talking out of his arse:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200910/ldbills/045/10045.72-77.html
Ah – that changes everything then.
That’ll teach me for taking a Tory councillor at his word 😉
“The question is, why isn’t this guy in prison for publicly denouncing policies designed to combat violence against women? Is he against basic human rights?”
Please tell me that was irony …
I am slightly disturbed by what I have just read here. There is a strange lack of maturity and an undercurrent of hate in this article I find to be nasty.
I find the whole domestic abuse debate interesting and I am shocked to see that use of misleading statistics on here already. If we are going to get equality we need to do it by telling the truth or we shoot ourselves in the foot.
This is entirely misleading for example and could easily be construed as hate speech because it contains at least one lie and paints an enitire gender with the same brush: ” men are overwhelmingly the perpetrators of domestic violence. it isn’t 1.5 men who are being murdered every week by their partners or ex partners, 1 in 4 men aren’t going to be victims of DV. 100 million men aren’t missing. 100,000 men aren’t raped every year. As one feminist said, there is a genocide against my people. if the war is against anyone, it’s women.”
In fact, men are NOT “overwhelmingly the perpetrators of domestic violence” at all. I know because when my brother was abused by a woman for the third time in his life, I did some research to find out the true figures. I looked at the largest domestic abuse study ever carried out in the UK. It is called HOS 191 and showed 3.1 million men are abused in the UK every year and 3.1 million women. Exactly 50/50. I then went on to look at a lot more studies and I discovered that all over the world the major scientific studies carried out all showed the same thing; parity or near parity in the figures between men and women.
If we are going to do justice to our battle we have to put away our claws and speak the truth or we just look like man hating bitches and if misogyny is wrong, so is misandry.
On the other point raised above, it does not matter if the language of the law is gender neutral if those tasked with enforcing it are not. I have seen with my own eyes that they very often are anything but gender neutral and the poor man often suffers at their hands, even though he is the victim. THAT must be addressed by honest women too.
As a woman I do not hate men. I know that without their bravery and sacrifice millions of women and children would not be alive today. I honour them which, quite frankly is more than most so-called feminists do. I also honour my own gender so it is PEOPLE I am interested in helping and I do not define people purely by their sex.
This is worrying.
[link to notorious MRA site edited out. Cath]
DV against women is wrong, but so is DV against men. There seems to be at least one organisation campaigning on this gender neutral agenda: Parity
http://www.parity-uk.org/
More than 40% of domestic violence victims are male, report reveals
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/sep/05/men-victims-domestic-violence
Other useful links for male victims of DV
Actually I’d say that 50% of DV victims are male because the real victims are the children
http://www.domesticviolencelondon.nhs.uk/1-what-is-domestic-violence-/25-domestic-abuse-against-men.html
http://www.respect.uk.net/pages/mens-advice-line.html
http://www.mankind.org.uk/
http://www.mensadviceline.org.uk/pages/subpage1.html
Although ‘go orders’ have been reported as the power to remove men, they won’t be of course. They’ll be the power to remove violent partners of either sex. So it isn’t a ‘war on men’.
What it may do, is save the odd life here and there.
Linda would you like to provide a link for this mysterious HOS 191 study? Cos I just put it into google and nothing is coming up!
Linda, Jane, A N Other – just out of interest, who sent out the alert then?
Oh don’t worry, I’ve found it. Here
Click to access hors191.pdf
At page 38
In the event, the CASI method found relatively high levels of male
victimisation, to the extent that men appear to be at equal risk to women of
domestic assault (4.2% of both sexes reported an assault in the last year).
But, as discussed in Chapter 5, women’s chances of serious assault are
greater than men’s, on average. And, as shown in Chapter 3, women are far
more likely than men to be repeatedly assaulted.
What was that about a little knowledge being a dangerous thing?
Dragging up a 1999 publication, based on 1996 survey results is just bad form. The Nigel-cheerleader testerically brings our attention to the HOS 191 as if it was produced yesterday, AND as if it had been backed up an verified by subsequent HO surveys and analysis. Wrong.
Although I have not had the opportunity to go through the latest BCS for DV, the 2005 one (which is 9 years more current than what the HOS 191 is based on) show:
Male perp & female victim 81%
Male perp & male victim 7%
Female perp & male victim 8%
Female perp & female victim 4%
Nowhere near a 50-50 split. Nor does it really show that more serious injuries are routine when it is male on female DV. I mean, FFS, on average males are bigger and heavier than females, so of course it is more likely that males will cause females more physical damage. You know, in the men’s sport of boxing, they actually recognise that opponents of equal weight categories constitute a fair fight. Heterosexual DV is the equivalent of putting a featherweight in with a heavyweight and calling it “fair”.
There are actually a lot more factors like financial dependance that contribute to a DV situation, but that would be totally beyond the comprehension of the Nigel cheerleader.
Parity is a ‘men’s rights campaign group’. For the life of me, I can’t see how that makes them ‘gender neutral’.
Would you care to give the workings out for that 50% figure by the way AN other? (even taking into account children). Because assuming children are 50% male and 50% female and saying that we have an average of two children per couple, it works out like this.
So 40 victims per 100(using parity’s figures) are male and 60 are female. Now lets add the children 100 male and 100 female. That’s 14o males and 160 females. NOT 50%, but approximately 46.7% and 53.3%.
Not to mention that that’s a bollocks theory anyway, pardon the pun.
AN Other – you may also care to refer to the study that I and Linda have cited about the severity and frequency of violence. Not all violence is equal. Smacking someone in the face or pulling their hair is violence. So is breaking their neck.
I’m sure men are victims of domestic violence. One male member of my own family has a wife who loses her temper and throws things, which is indeed a form of violence. Not quite the same though as the two female members of my family who were very nearly killed by violent partners.
Obviously my experience isn’t necessarily representative, but the only man I know who has been on the receiving end of a beating, is a gay male.
That kind of atavistic, knee-jerk, femifascist condemnation of Cllr Williams position is what we have come to expect from you Cath Elliot. Domestic violence is a big issue not just for women, but also for us men. Behaviour breeds behaviour. For every woman that gets physically mauled by a man, there is a man (usually the same) bawling for help and trapped inside his own mental hell. Where is the compassion? Oh no…irrespective of the context of said domestic dispute..the man, because he is the man, must be thrown out in the snow. Thank god the world isn’t run by Cath Elliot’s mob.. because that kind of sexual discrimination and lesbo fantasy oppression will be just the gravy.
Ramiie
Did you know you have the rare distinction of being the only person I’ve ever actually barred from commenting on this blog?
But I had to let that comment through because it made me laugh. Out loud 🙂
Have a lovely Xmas. Just make sure you check your gravy for any lesbo fantasy oppression before you go pouring it all over your turkey.
Hey
Good blog, as ever, really good to see Cllr Williams and his ilk getting shown up for what they are. My mother suffered domestic violence and I wish something like this was around then.
Keep up the great posts.
Cheers and merry xmas
Sean
In response to the post questioning whether Parity is gender neutral
http://www.parity-uk.org/
The Objects of PARITY are those set out in the current PARITY constitution, namely:
– to promote and protect the equal rights of men and women to the enjoyment of all civil, political, economic social and cultural rights under the law;
– to institute proceedings in the UK or appropriate European Courts for the purpose of establishing or protecting any such equal rights.
DV is wrong regardless of the gender of the perpetrator.
This is also worth a look – a very well argued and referenced case for reassessing the conventional approach to DV
Yes, how dare a man take offense at men only being targeted for a DV policy when in the real world, men AND women are victims of DV from bad people.
Feminists pretend it’s a man problem which affects women, as they can’t accept that some women can be bad and most men are good.
Stop pretending only men do bad and it won’t be classed as a ‘war on men’.
Some good points about how there are so many male vicitms out there, but it still seems that absolutely everyone on both sides have completely missed the point here.
These orders allow the police to expel people from their own homes whenever they want. No trial, no jury, no judge, no evidence, no proof. It’s a huge attack on civil liberties and an abuse of basic human rights and the legal process.
It’s a law just begging to be misused.
I don’t care what Parity’s AIMS are, the BNP and the EDL are constantly telling us they’re not racist, the Graun article you linked to says they’re a ‘men’s rights group’ therefore they’re not gender neutral *waits for the BNP and EDL to show up*.
And I don’t care what someone says in a video. Your lot turned up and started quoting studies. We have pointed out that a)it’s better to find out a bit about such studies before you start quoting them because they often say the OPPOSITE of what you are claiming and b)that there have been subsequent studies (like the British Crime survey which say women are the chief victims of DV).
Do you think Professor John Archer may be a wee bit BIASED?
Professor Archer analyzed data from 82 US and UK studies on relationship violence, dating back to 1972. He also looked at 17 studies based on victim reports from 1,140 men and women. Speaking last night, he said that female aggression was greater in westernized women because they were “economically emancipated” and therefore not afraid of ending a relationship. “Feminist writers say most of the acts against men are not important but the same people have used the same surveys to inflate the number of women who are attacked,” he said. “In the past it would not even have been considered that women are violent. My view is that you must base social policy on the whole evidence.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A3539135
Now has been pointed out above all the OTHER studies available show that women experience more violence. I can’t find a link to professor Archer’s study and his methodology. But complaining about women being ‘economically emancipated’?
Ramiie, you should do stand up.
LOL anyway @ the video. Feminists cause men to become violent. How do you explain then A N Other that most homicide victims are male? And so are most perpetrators? Was a feminist involved somewhere telling dude a to kill dude b?
Can we have more pictures of the dog now Cath?
@ AN Other – what makes you think that a video produced by someone calling themselves the Happy Misogynist would go down well on a feminist blog?
And let me introduce you to the concept of Fieberts list which you are so happily citing as ‘well researched and referenced’.
“Gender Symmetry” in Domestic Violence: A Substantive and Methodological Research Review
(Peer reviewed is emphasised above because so many of the ‘studies’ which support your opinion are just that – opinions – not rigorous research studies.
My favourite part? One of the so-called studies ‘proving’ that women are as violent as men was based on violence in American comic strips in 1950 (Saenger, 1963).
Purleeze.
There are also these referenced blog posts:
Why Men Right’s Activists Prefer Data From Before 1990
On “Husband-Battering”; Are Men Equal Victims?
I am not of the school that denies the existence of male victims altogether (indeed this is something of a straw argument by anti-feminists as it is not something I have heard any feminist say in – ooh – 25 years of working on this issue.) but to claim parity is to deny reality. Male victims do not have to exist in equal numbers to deserve our sympathy and support and it bemuses me why anti-feminists seem so stuck onthis point when the evidence so clearly contradicts them.
Oh and please don’t bother trotting out that other chestnut – namely that there are no support services for men. There are. The *only* domestic violence service that is specifically for women are the majority of refuges – a service which agencies providing help to male victims report that men rarely need and that the current level of provision is about right. All other services – including other housing options – are equally available to men.
The link provided by Spicy about selective use of data sources by MRAs is very interesting. It refers wholly to the USA but highlights the probability that declining numbers of men murdered by female partners in those US statistics is due to greater resources available to help women who want to leave abusive relationships, so less of them get to the desperate point of using violence to end the abuse. Also, the introduction of “no fault” divorces is suggested as a factor.
“So it seems that, thanks to feminism, abusive men may now be less likely to be murdered by their wives.”
Am I to seriously believe that “Feminists” who “fight for the rights of women” are not misandrist and Men’s rights groups who do the same thing for males are somehow “misogynists?” How does that work? It sounds to me like an argument that says, ‘If you argue with a feminist and their ideology then you hate ALL women but if we argue with male MRA’s it does not prove that we hate ALL men.’ Surely you can see how pathetic and warped that is and the damage it does, not only to relationships between men and women, but also to the credibility of the feminist movement. I mean, do you EVER stop and just listen to yourselves or are you so full of hate for men that you are now incapable of hearing it? Just pause and take a long hard think about this statement from above:
“The question is, why isn’t this guy in prison for publicly denouncing policies designed to combat violence against women? Is he against basic human rights?”
Apart from LABAN, does anyone here have any idea how stupid and malicious this comment is?
Then there was this gem:
After quoting one tiny part of a massive study it took a whole team of my co workers at the time one week to fully understand she says, in a typically aggressive, pseudo intellectual and sarcastic tone, “What was that about a little knowledge being a dangerous thing?” This from someone who did not know the study existed until yesterday. Who spent a few minutes searching the web for it, cherry picked a paragraph or two she liked and cut and paste it here as “evidence” that everyone apart from her is stupid. Unfortunately, this is often the standard of so-called ‘feminist research.’ It totally distorts reality because it suits their cause to make women frightened of men and to make gullible males hate their own gender.
About six weeks ago I spent a few evenings trawling around various men’s sites on the Internet on a suggestion from a friend and what I found was very interesting. There were men out these with a very big chip on their shoulders who clearly hate women. These were very much in a minority and, interestingly enough, were often rebuked by other Men’s rights activists for displaying their hate. There were many men out there who had clearly been badly hurt in many and various ways by women who had legitimate grievances and many of them had clearly been badly damaged by their experiences. There were also lots of men who seemed to be doing all they can to support the family and who clearly love women. What conclusion that emerged from my journey through their world on the Web was that these men DO NOT hate ALL women at all. What they hate is feminism and what it has come to stand for. What also was made clear to me was how feminists brand and label people who disagree with them, including other women.
Another technique complained of by men and used by feminists and which is clearly on show on this board, is the classic Ad Hominem attack. Shoot the messenger and ridicule the message. This, of course, locks the mind of the one doing it into a hate filled fug. A sort of mental mist of self righteous, self importance, certainty of “rightness” that is totalitarian in nature and is exactly the same mind set as that displayed by Neo-Nazi and Neo Marxist groups. It is evidence, not of rational thought, but irrational fears and hatred, in which any counter argument is seen as an attempt to somehow enslave the self proclaimed “victim” group. and which must be silenced.
You can view this kind of thinking and what it can lead too here: http://www.mefeedia.com/watch/28771192
It is this mind set that caused feminists to attack, threaten to kill and finally drive into exile, Erin Pizzey. Her crime was simply to say that women are violent too. At first the feminist response to this ideologically banned information was to ridicule her and shout down what she was saying. Because she would not be silent they did all they could to prevent her publishing her books by threatening to fire bomb publishers and book stores. Then they began to make so many threats against her life and to stalk her wherever she went, in large vocal and threatening groups that the bomb squad was forced to intercept all of her mail and check it before she opened it. Apparently, the welfare of Erin’s children did NOT seem to figure very highly during this vile intimidation of the women who first recognised abuse in this country and opened the worlds first domestic abuse shelter.
Then of course, there was the Neil Lyndon episode. This former Times journalist wrote and published a book critical of the feminist propaganda and ideology and they virtually destroyed the man and his career. All in the name of “equality” naturally. Throughout the history of feminism they have been violent and so obviously filled with anti male hatred that if the law WAS applied equally in the courts many of them would have been thrown into jail for hate speech alone.
The thinking behind such actions as these all starts from a paranoid idea developing into hateful thoughts and then finally, into hateful actions. Add in a touch of totalitarian thinking, some twisted and perverse Marxist ideology, some twisting and invention of statistics and the dangerous group-think that results from large numbers of people infected by this mental and emotional disease and what results are dangerous and perverse ideas no longer open to reason and being driven by paranoid fantasies of persecution. In other words, exactly the mind set of messieurs Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin.
Do feminists twist, pervert and disseminate false statistics? Well, apart from what has already been displayed here, listen to what the BBC found the BBC doing on this matter here: http://www.archive.org/details/FalseDomesticViolenceFiguresExposed
In my view and the view of many others, many of today’s feminists seriously disturbed and obsessed people filled with hatred for the opposite gender. However, worse than that, they make us women look bad as a gender too, because they pander to the lowest of all human instincts and desires and they poison other minds, not just their own.
In summary then, I view modern feminism as a sort of political black death. A plague that needs to be disinfected and removed from society as quickly as possible because it is incapable of seeing, or evaluating — let alone telling — the truth. It is a dangerous ultra leftwing political force inhabited by some of the most disturbed people ever to trouble our land. What makes it so dangerous is that those involved with it have no idea just how sick they are and in that respect, it is akin to insanity itself.
@Cath/Polly..and a merrie christmas to you to, my favourite
concrete-knickered battleaxes xxxx
Linda (who incidentally, just in case regular readers are confused, is not the same Linda who sometimes posts here)
You post shit like this and yet I get called a fascist?
Ok. I let the MRAs posts through because I think sometimes it’s useful to see some of the arguments they use, but I’m done now after that one.
Linda et al. Don’t bother spending hours composing any more comments for this thread, because they either won’t get through, or I will delete them. My blog my rules: now run along and go and play somewhere else.
To everyone else – have a lovely lovely Xmas, and all the best for the New Year.
Cath
x
I suspect that Mr Williams is either badly mis-informed or is letting common prejudice get in the way of sound judgement.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11836047
This is the original news article in which this scheme was announced, and at no point does it specifically refer to either men or women. It refers instead to “suspects” and “alleged victims.” So under the scheme, either males or females could be banned from contact from their partners if they are suspected of abuse.
What it does do, though, is put a significant amount of power in the hands of the police. We simply can’t tell which police officers will attend a domestic call-out, whether they will be male or female officers, or whether they will be free from the aforementioned common prejudice. It will be very interesting to see how this turns out…
can someone please tell me where the f*** in this thread did anyone say that men were NOT victims of DV? because i can’t find it anywhere. i think all this post did was point out that talking about and legislating against DV is not a ‘war against men’ and pointing out that this is a gender neutral policy.
men are victims of DV = bad
women are victims of DV = bad
we know that. please allow us to get on with fighting DV instead of assuming people are making misandrist or sexist or uninformed comments because they have dared to write about how a cllr has completely misunderstood the purpose of a trial programme to protect victims of DV.
My last word: of course I agree that DV is no laughing matter and that women have suffered vile oppression at the hands of weak, emotionally inarticulate men. However, as a six year old I witnessed my saint, my nan knocked unconscious by her drunken husband, my grand dad, and when she fell I saw him fall too, sobbing like a great two year old. I remember being both alarmed and fascinated by that spectacle as I was horrified and traumatised by the sight of my nan lying at our feet, and confusion all around. In one corner my grandad wept and bent over his wife shaking her, begging her to say something. Indeed, only men understand the pressures of being men as only women can understand the pressure to negotiate the fear of her lover’s temper. A little less binary thinking feminism could help us all.
Raamie, what you describe is a common situation. Many perpetrators of domestic violence will express sorrow or regret. It doesn’t mean their actions are justified in any way though. The one and only situation in which violence against the person is justified is self defence/defence of others who are under threat.
Would Polly recommend a feminist text that identifies the link between capitalism and DV? BTW, I would prefer something from an intellectual, not Andrea Dworkin.
I’d recommend Engels ‘the origin of the family, private property and the state’ widely available for free on the internet Ramiie for an examination of the development of patriarchal structures. Not a perfect analysis by any means, but pretty good for a (rich white) dude at the time.
For a more up to date examination of the position of women within capitalism, you might enjoy Lindsey German’s ‘material girls, men women and work’. I agree that neither of these are about DV specifically, but I personally think we can’t divorce the position of women economically from domestic violence as a phenomenon. I’m sure plenty disagree with me, but the problem from my POV is not that men are naturally more violent, but that male violence is socially tolerated. I think we have to look to the development of patriarchal family structures and their value to capitalism for why this is.
sorry got the title of the Lindsey German book wrong, it’s “women, men and work”
Whether you agree with her or not, Ramiie, Andrea Dworkin was an intellectual.
Happy New Year, Cath and Polly. I am a long time lurker.
I have always assumed that its women who give the nod to patriachy…sistahs get vicious when they think another woman is getting too uppity in the society – to quote the late General Zia.
Well I think maybe you need to read the Lindsey German book R, (though you can start with the Engels) to get a better idea –
I agree to an extent, you may be surprised to know, that many women do indeed uphold the patriarchy. Largely because it suits their interests, and they get privileges from it. Which is not really the same as getting ‘vicious about another woman getting too uppity’. Most women who enforce patriarchy on other women do so to gain male approval, hence the women being targeted tend to subvert patriarchy. For instance I’ve noticed that I am sometimes targeted by women with male partners who like to point out how ‘unfeminine’ I am in contrast to them. Like I care. They think that by doing down another female and pointing out their superiority in the patriarchal pecking order they will gain kudos with males.
I’d also recommend, as a work of fiction, Margaret Atwood’s ‘the handmaid’s tale’ for a really good analysis of this. We can see many figures like the fictional ones in that book in the contemporary USA, incidentally. I’ll leave you to guess who they are.
I am not familiar with the works of the late General Zia, a state I intend to maintain.
OK Polly will do..btw I think that badass gay women and live and let live straight men like me have a lot in common..we could crack a beer, respectfully admire the feminine form, maybe toss a good DVD on the flatscreen…
we should talk..bring to the table same ideas from different positions on the field methinks…lol